Michael Cox

Zonal Marking

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{"strong"=>["An insightful, comprehensive and always entertaining appreciation of how European football has developed over the last three decades by the author of the much heralded The Mixer. "]}
Continental football has always cast a spell over the imagination. From the attacking flair of Real Madrid of the 50s to the defensive brilliance of the Italians in the 60s and onto the total football of the Dutch in the 70s, the European leagues have been where the game has most evolved and taken its biggest steps forward. And over the last three decades, since the rebranding of the Champions League in 1992, that pattern has continued unabated, with each major European footballing nation playing its part in how the game’s tactics have developed.
From the intelligent use of space displayed by the phenomenal Ajax team of the early 90s, to the dominance of the highly strategic Italian league in the late 90s and onto the technical wizardry of Barcelona’s tiki-taka, the European game continues to reinvent the tactical dimension of the game, creating blueprints which both club and national teams around the world strive to follow.
In Zonal Marking, Michael Cox brilliantly investigates and analyses the major leagues around Europe over specific time periods and demonstrates the impact each has made on how the game is now played. Highly entertaining and packed full of wonderful anecdotes, this is the first book of its kind to take an overview of modern European football, and lays bare just how much the international language of football can be shaped by a nation’s unique identity.
This book is currently unavailable
506 printed pages
Original publication
2019
Publication year
2019
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Impressions

  • Olga Gshared an impression3 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    💡Learnt A Lot

  • Jonas Sandalshared an impression5 years ago
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Quotes

  • Olga Ghas quoted3 years ago
    This diversity isn’t solely important in a footballing sense. Football is, for millions of people across Europe, the best opportunity to discover more about their neighbours. Whether the topic is Dutch liberalism, French multiculturalism or Catalan independence, football – and footballing style – often provides the introduction. That’s why football remains a window into other cultures, and a valuable artefact. European football pits countries against one another, but only for 90 minutes. In a wider sense, it does much more to bring them together.
  • Olga Ghas quoted3 years ago
    Klopp’s greatest legacy is that the German word ‘Gegenpressing’, rather than its obvious translation as ‘counter-pressing’, is now widely used across Europe. Everyone is therefore aware of the concept’s origins and the fact that, for the first time since Beckenbauer re-defined the role of sweeper, German football has been responsible for genuine tactical innovation.
  • Olga Ghas quoted3 years ago
    Focusing on regaining possession immediately changed the way transition football was considered. As outlined above in Chapter 10 in the discussion about the Portuguese focus on the transition, coaching courses usually explain modern football as a series of four situations, flowing continuously in a circle: the possession phase; the transition from possession to out-of-possession; the out-of-possession phase; and then the transition to possession. And repeat. But now, the defensive transition was about regaining the ball quickly and returning immediately to the possession phase, effectively short-circuiting the way football was considered. Sometimes you could watch Barcelona for an entire half and not witness their out-of-possession structure.
    Klopp borrowed from this approach and spoke about it with a specific term: ‘gegenpressing’, which translates as counter-pressing. It’s sometimes misunderstood, however. Counter-pressing isn’t to pressing what counter-attacking is to attacking. It’s not necessarily countering a press, but pressing a counter.

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